Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol

Monday, November 7, 2011

The demise of DVDs has been forecast for several years now due
to streaming but as anyone who’s tried to stream much content through the
various services can tell you, the bulk of filmed content can still only be
found on DVDs. Not only that, but some
aspects of the DVD market are thriving as companies continue to release
material that can’t be found anywhere else. Tomorrow’s release of Magoo on TV, an 11 disc
boxed set is one such item. Someone at Shout
Factory saw an unmet need and decided to fulfill it by releasing Mr. Magoo’s entire television career on one
complete boxed set, featuring cool retro-inspired cover art.

A rundown of what’s in the box:

The Mr. Magoo Show-All
130 five minute shorts from the 1960 syndicated series, including the original opens,
closes and bumpers. Commentaries in this
set include animation historian Jerry Beck on Beatnik Magoo, Blithering Heights, Magoo and the Beanstalk and Magoo Meets Boing Boing while I add my
two cents on Magoo Meets Frankenstein.

The Famous Adventures
of Mr. Magoo-All 26 half hours from the 1964 series, including the original titles
and show lead-ins with Mr. Magoo, which have never before been released in
their entirety to home video. For years,
the multi-part episodes were cut together as single longer episodes and released as a
single unit, much like the Robin Hood episodes were only available as Mr. Magoo in Sherwood Forest. Commentaries on this set include Don Morgan, series
layout artist, discussing Moby Dick; Bob
Singer, series layout artist, discussing Robin
Hood; and me discussing William Tell
and Doctor Frankenstein.

Uncle Sam Magoo-The
1970 NBC special along with a new 16 minute featurette produced especially for
this set, Oh, Magoo, You’ve Done It
Again! which discusses TV animation production and includes interviews with
layout men Bob Singer and Don Morgan, production head Richard Krown, production
coordinator Paul Carlson, animation historian Jerry Beck and me. There’s also a small gallery of still art and
images of Magoo.

Have Benny Rubin’s
comic Cholly tracks for The Mr. Magoo Show been restored? Solly, Cholly, I regret to report that Shout Factory was unable to gain access to the original
negatives and had to make due with the 1980s USA Network transfers. Only about a third of the shorts feature the
original Charlie voice.

Has this material been
re-mastered or restored? No, Shout
Factory was only able to use existing transfers. The expense of re-mastering from the original
negative is more than special interest releases like this can afford.

Have Mr. Magoo’s television commercials been included? Unfortunately, no. Most of them are difficult to find, some may
even be lost. There has been no archive
kept of any of his commercial work, including the hundreds of GE spots he made
over several decades. Once the material
is found, permission must then be obtained from often apathetic corporations for its
use.

Why wasn’t Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol included in the set?
Classic Media just released a new Blu-Ray transfer of the classic
special last year and preferred not to compete with itself by having it
included in this set.

The two highlights of this set for me are the documentary in
which some of the last remaining artists from UPA discuss the production of the
TV cartoons and the complete, never before released series,The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo. You can buy it here.

Coming next summer from Shout Factory, a new boxed set
featuring the complete series of Mr. Magoo’s theatrical cartoons including the long out of print,1001 Arabian Nights and rare bonus material.

UPDATE! As a promotional giveaway, Shout Factory is offering a boxed set to the first one to correctly answer this question:

There were three credited actresses who provided the female voices for the
Famous Adventures series but only
one appeared only once. Who was she and in what episode did she provide the voice?

In anticipation of the release of the M.M.Show(by Classic Media)back in 2005 I wrote to them asking if there was anyway I could obtain a copy of the DVD's. To my amazement/delight a nice gentleman there sent me a copy (to"review")months before it was ever officially released. After watching the DVD's I inquired of my contact as to the reason Cholly(who is in 39 cartoons)has his original voice in only 17 of these. His response was that after diligently searching thru all the existing film elements the other 22 cartoons with Cholly's original voice could not be located.He told me the people working on the release at that time loved classic cartoons and were themselves "very dissapointed" they had to release them that way. DJA

You mentioned that Shout Factory was unable to gain access to the original negatives for The Mr. Magoo Show and had to make due with the 1980s USA Network transfers with edited Charlie voice track. Where are the original negatives and/or why can access not be gained? Thanks!

About Me

This blog will feature additional information related to either of my two books, Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol or The Art of Jay Ward Productions. Readers are welcome to submit questions, facts, trivia and ephemera related to the posts on either blog.